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April 23, 2008

The Point brings together problems, people, and the pressure of collective action. The site allows users to create campaigns and encourage other people to join anonymously.

Using the principles of Gladwell's Tipping Point, once the number of members reaches a certain critical mass (10, 50, 2000) and action is triggered: a sale, a press release, a protest.

Campaigns are tools for people to organize a group action that occurs only when enough people join to make participation worthwhile. Campaigns can be used for any situation where people want safety in numbers, from planning a party to boycotting a corporation to saving chickens.

Check out the simple, clever animations used to demonstrate the types of people, the problems they want to tackle, and the resulting campaigns--that can use The Point to catalyze change.

May 02, 2006

We lost a good woman this last week, urban thinker and influential writer Jane Jacobs (see NY Times obit).

Jacobs detailed the patterns and plans that make cities alive and vibrant--and railed against the insane urban planning decisions that killed them. Both she and Christopher Alexander helped me to understand why old neighborhoods in inner city America have so much in common with classic Italian villages: They both have narrow sidewalks that encourage contact with our fellow humans.

She also countered that notion in writing:

Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like
suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways,
and one of them is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

This comes from her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which is considered Jacobs' single most influential book, and quite possibly the most influential American book on urban planning.

Widely read by both planning professionals and the general public, the book is a strong critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s which, she claimed, destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated dense, mixed-use neighborhoods and frequently cited New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.

March 02, 2006

The principal of my High School was a large, serious man named Mr. Snodgrass.

And, no, I am not making that up. As I was nearing graduation, Mr.
Snodgrass tried to give me some helpful advice. "Perhaps," he said with
gravitas, "you should go into Accounting. You know, to have something
to fall back on if this whole art thing doesn't work out."

I think about this suggestion at odd times--once while scribing at the
Pentagon in a vault/room five stories below ground; once while a CEO of
a Fortune 50 company asks what business school I graduated from; and,
once this week, while presenting to a graduate level class at the
Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Business.

The irony is that, professionally speaking, I am still doing what I did
at age seventeen. Back in the Reagan 1980s, I was scribbling quotes
from Monty Python's The Meaning of Lifein the end pages of my
English Lit book. These days, I'm doodling while people struggle with
complex issues facing their organizations and the world at large.

During the lecture to the CMU students (using my trusty Neuland walls,
of course!), I asked the group how they felt the school should teach
Entrepreneurship, especially in the growing field of "social
enterprise".